Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Texas Businessman Offers $2M Prize For Finding The Key To Alzheimer’s In Existing Research

Meanwhile, in other news, the Washington Post reports on an effort in California to equip people with Alzheimer's, dementia or autism — potential wanderers — with trackable bracelets that can be activated by search crews.

Stat:
New Prize Offers $2 Million For Finding Key To Alzheimer's In Past Research
Is the key to Alzheimer’s disease lurking, overlooked, in the 100,000-plus scientific papers that have been published on this disease over the last century? A Texas businessman who lost family members to dementia thinks so, and on Monday he announced that there’s $4 million waiting for the people who find it: Prizes of up to $2 million will be awarded to those who comb the scientific literature, extract the key findings, and synthesize them into one simple explanation of the disease, said James Truchard, 75, an electrical engineer who recently retired as CEO of National Instruments, which he co-founded in 1976. (Begley, 11/5)

The Washington Post:
Tracking People With Dementia Who Wander And Get Lost.
L.A. Found, which launched in this sprawling county in September, equips potential wanderers with trackable bracelets that, when activated by search crews, transmit a radio signal to handheld receivers placed in several Sheriff’s Department cruisers and helicopters. The battery-operated bracelets are available to anyone with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia or autism. The bracelets are nothing new. They are distributed by Project Lifesaver, a nearly 20-year-old nonprofit group based in Florida that has issued the white, watch-sized wristbands — each equipped with a radio transmitter — to hundreds of municipal public-safety agencies around the country. (Kuznia, 11/3)

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